


escape velocity

by bog gremlin (tomatocages)



Series: trope bingo fills [8]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alien Invasion, Alternate Universe - X-Men Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Champion Shiro (Voltron), Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Mutant Powers, Mutant Shiro (Voltron), On the Run, One Shot, Pre-Relationship, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:00:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28076631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomatocages/pseuds/bog%20gremlin
Summary: Earth is being invaded by the Galra. Mutants are being recruited to fight them. After escaping from the Garrison’s experimental military program and living as an underground cage fighter, Shiro isn’t interested in the coming war. But when he finds Keith hiding in his truck — and learns that Keith is part-Galra — he's willing to seek a quieter life.Unfortunately, the Garrison isn’t finished with Shiro yet.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Series: trope bingo fills [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1679653
Comments: 17
Kudos: 89





	escape velocity

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for a zine, but I withdrew from the project, so now it’s a trope bingo fill! 
> 
> Prompt G4: superheroes. With many apologies to the first X-Men movie.

Shiro wins the cage match easily. He expected to; he’s a brutal fighter, and his opponents in the latest underground ring are no match for his cybernetic arm. Still, he takes care not to ignite the energy weapon the military so thoughtfully installed, back when they were running experiments on him. It’s been a few years since he escaped the program — Matt pulled some strings, or hacked a system, which is the only way Shiro has managed to avoid the Garrison this long. They’ve declared him dead; Shiro can’t go back home, but he makes a living drifting from underground fighting match to underground fighting match, stuffing cash into his bag and sleeping in his truck. It’s a surreal kind of low profile.

He’s had his share of near-misses.

“You don’t put on much of a show,” the bookie warns him when Shiro collects his winnings. “I’d get out of town, if I were you.”

Shiro nods sharply in thanks; he took a fist to the jaw in the last round, and talking will irritate the bruise until his healing factor kicks in. The bruise is enough to make him move on; people ask questions when you don’t look as broken as your last fight indicates you ought to be, and Shiro’s never been good at makeup application. 

He heads back to his truck, already thinking about where he can pull over and catch a few hours of sleep for the night, when his duffle — tossed carelessly into the bed as he rounds the back of the vehicle — strikes the folded tarp he keeps as a cover for his camping gear.

Folded tarps don’t usually flinch. 

Shiro keeps walking, pretending he hasn’t noticed the obvious lump until he’s close enough to grab the fabric with his flesh hand and give it a yank. He’s already got his prosthetic fist raised, energy pooling at the fingertips until the whole hand glows purple, when the person hiding in the back of the truck gasps and rolls away, bringing up their hands to protect their face.

A _familiar_ face. 

“Keith?” Shiro asks. He drops his hand and wonders if he can blame the energy flare on a trick of the light; he parked in a dodgy corner of the lot to begin with. 

Keith — and it _is_ Keith, albeit a Keith who looks very little like the teenager Shiro left behind when he joined the Garrison program — doesn’t drop his hands. He’s wearing half-gloves, the kind they used to make fun of when other people wore them. 

“Shiro. You died,” Keith says, numbly. And — Shiro’s not worried that Keith saw the new arm, now. Not when he sees how Keith has changed. 

“That’s what you were supposed to think,” he responds. Keith’s grown fur along his sharp jawline, and his hands have claws, and he’s bright purple — he looks like one of the aliens the Garrison’s been fighting since their arrival on Earth. 

Keith looks like a Galra.

But he’s still _Keith_ , despite the new color and the animal quality to his posture. Keith was Shiro’s project, once upon a time, back when they were in a mentoring program; Keith had been his friend. It was while Shiro was waiting for his Garrison acceptance. Keith had been scrappy and determined then, strangely easy for Shiro to talk to, and he has that same look about him now. And his eyes — there’s no changing the way Keith looks when he’s afraid and trying to hide it. 

Shiro sighs, long and slow, the way he does after he finishes one fight and knows he has another coming up. “Get in the cab,” he says, and feels grateful when Keith scrambles to obey.

Once they’ve slammed the doors shut and clipped their seatbelts, Shiro turns the keys in the ignition. After watching the way Keith huddles across the bench seat, Shiro reaches out and taps the dash.

“You can turn up the heat,” he says. And, “it’s good to see you.”

“I think you’re the first person who’s ever said that to me,” Keith says. He fiddles with the climate controls for a minute, twisting the knob up to its maximum setting and angling the vents towards his side of the cab. It’ll take a few minutes for the heat to really get going, but Shiro can feel the temperature rising unpleasantly. 

“Where are you headed?”

Keith rustles around in one of the pockets of his coat — oversized and too thin for the weather, but with sleeves long enough that he can pull the cuffs down over his hands — and retrieves a newspaper clipping from a _help wanted_ section. Shiro wonders where Keith found a newspaper to clip from; he hasn’t seen a paper job ad in years. 

“I’ve been looking for seasonal jobs,” Keith says. “Picking fruit, mending fences. I just found a posting for someone to work on a ranch out west, away from people. I’m better when there aren’t people.”

“Montana,” Shiro says, reading off the paper. Cattle country and a stereotype of not talking much to temporary employees; it could work. He flicks on his blinker and checks his blind spot before careening from the entrance ramp onto the interstate. His truck doesn’t merge so much as it lurches into the lane. It’ll be fine once he gets it up to speed; it’s so heavy it basically propels itself. “I’ve never been.”

“Well,” Keith says. “It’s pretty far away from Arizona.”

“I like the sound of it already,” Shiro says. Shiro had once been hyper aware of every tiny thing he could do to make Keith’s life easier, and it looks like the Garrison didn’t carve that out of him, when they were replacing pieces. He’s surprised that he likes this part of himself, the part that surges back up and wants to keep Keith safe. 

Seeing the way Keith’s bones and skin have changed, and knowing how much Keith looks like the aliens the experimental program trained Shiro to fight, Shiro thinks he’s better off keeping as close as possible. Shiro’s been dead to everyone who ever knew him; this is an opportunity for resurrection. 

It would be nice to have some company. 

He’s so focused on Keith — who looks like he’s dropped weight, not that he had any to spare back in the desert — that Shiro’s usual hypervigilance fails him. He doesn’t notice the sprinter van that merges onto the road after them, and that follows, from a politie distance, as Shiro navigates towards Big Sky Country. 

* * *

Patience might yield focus, but after the radio stations cut out, Shiro’s left alone with his thoughts, and they meander. He gives in to his burning curiosity. 

“Hey,” he says, and reaches out. It’s a stupid move. Shiro knows as he makes it that he’s going to end up getting his fingers bitten or something, because the way Keith has been acting, he’s not habituated to human touch. And Keith does snap at him, grabbing Shiro’s fingers and bending them back towards his wrist. 

Shiro accepts the wrench and forces himself not to fight back. He’s driving and he doesn’t want to hurt Keith. 

Keith draws back almost immediately, the way a dog does when it’s fighting out of self-preservation and feels guilty about it. 

“What _happened_ to you?” Shiro asks, keeping his hand outstretched. Keith was always a little skittish back in the mentoring program, but Shiro doesn’t remember this. Shiro hasn’t seen much like this outside of the labs, first when he was an experiment and later, after he started guarding other experiments. He’s not sure why he asks, because he doesn’t think he wants to know the answer.

But Keith surprises him: Keith had a way of doing that in the program, too. 

“I dunno,” Keith mumbles, leaning over and gently fist-bumping Shiro’s outstretched hand, a peace offering. “It was slow at first — I’d wake up on the wrong side of the bed, or I’d get in a fight and it would take forever to calm down. Everyone just said it was stress and hormones, when I aged out of the group home.”

“How old are you?” Shiro can’t remember; he left when Keith was seventeen, but time hasn’t had a lot of meaning for him since. 

Keith exhales heavily through his nose. “Twenty-two.”

“Better not be saying that so I’ll buy you booze,” Shiro says. The joke falls flat. “Anyway. The purple thing?”

“That started later,” Keith said. “I had this job cleaning offices after hours, it was fine — but the agency kept putting me on shifts across town, and it took forever to get there and back. I wasn’t sleeping much, mostly dozing on the bus. Someone tried to take my bag and I slapped them, only — “ He holds out his hand and Shiro glances away from the road to examine Keith’s claws. Keith’s hands are thin and cracked from what Shiro guesses is a combination of cold weather and chemical cleaners, and the tips look almost like dark nail polish. Even the purple tinge around the cuticles could be attributed to poor circulation or spilled ink. As Galra claws go, they’re not too obvious, but Shiro guesses they’re wickedly sharp.

“I didn’t mean to hurt them,” Keith says, tonelessly. He sounds like a soldier reporting an infraction: waiting for punishment and refusing to flinch. “But my claws came out and they needed surgery to repair a severed artery, and I lost my job after I’d gotten released on bond. Then I lost my spot in the apartment.”

Shiro remembers Keith talking about shared apartments, how a bunch of kids from foster care would bunk together to save money after aging out. It’s easy to see what came next: sleeping in the public library, riding public transit all night to avoid sitting outside, and trying to find work under the table. Working seasonal jobs for shitty pay. Sleeping in abandoned pickup trucks.

“I volunteered for this unit,” Shiro says, to fill the void. He could probably convince Keith to keep talking, but it’s obvious from the look of him that he’s at the end of his rope and ready to hang from it. It’s cruel to keep questioning. “I have a weird genetic quirk the Garrison thought would manifest as cancer or something. I didn’t want to lose my chance to fly, so I agreed to this experimental program, where they’d fuck around with my bone marrow or something — I was never too sure on the details.”

 _“Shiro._ ”

“I’m just like you,” he rushes to get the words out. “I don’t turn purple and sprout claws, but I can heal from most wounds, fast, and I’m stronger than I should be. I’m stronger than I _look_. It was fine for a while and then they took me out of the lab and put me on the front lines.” He slaps his palm against the steering wheel of the truck, narrowly avoiding the horn. “There’s a war going on out there, Keith.”

“I know,” Keith says. “I’m running away from it.”

“Me too,” Shiro says. “I got out. It cost me my arm and all the favors my buddy and I could manage, but I’m staying out.”

“Is that why you’re still fighting?” Keith is shrewd, Shiro remembers, but he’s not being manipulative when he asks why, if he wants to lay low, Shiro is making ends meet with his distinctive fist.

“That’s because I’m pissed off,” he says. “The arm is nothing. I had to fake my own death — I can’t tell my aunts I made it out of the Garrison, I can’t look my cousins up on social media, I don’t get to see baby pictures from my old squadmates. I’m a ghost.”

“You’re not suited to it,” Keith says. “Lying low takes practice.” It’s true: back when they first met, Shiro was a shining light. He still has all those qualities, and he’s honed them — Shiro knows how to be charismatic, he knows how to convince a team to keep running headlong into a fight they have no chance of winning. 

“Guess I could stand to learn a thing of two,” Shiro says. 

* * *

Keith sleeps a lot, after that conversation. Shiro is grateful: it means he can keep twisting the tuning dial on the radio. He’s not sure if he’s chasing dead air or the staticky bursts of the nearest public radio station. 

It’s clear that Keith trusts him, even after all the time Shiro has spent away. Keith might be worried he’ll hurt someone; but Shiro knows how to inflict damage. And _Keith_ is the one determined to find somewhere he can settle down, under the radar and off the map, in hopes of being left alone. 

The world doesn’t work that way, not for Galra. When Shiro was at the Garrison, half the training sessions his team ran were dedicated to learning Galran weak points. They were big furry aliens that Shiro learned to think of in increasingly animalistic terms. It made them easier to fight. Since he’s been on the run, news broadcasts have indicated that the Galra are sending more and more obvious strike teams to Earth, and they’re starting to garner sympathy from other mutants. Not all of them; not even most. But it’s enough that most news outlets are talking about it, and Shiro knows the Garrison hates any kind of subversion. Odds are they’re planning a crackdown. 

Finally, he pulls over for food. Keith has the look of someone who doesn’t get much in the way of protein. Shiro buys three value meals and a couple of the little fried pies his aunt used to buy him when he was a kid. When he slides one out of its cardboard sleeve and takes a bite, it tastes exactly as he remembers: molton-hot, sweet, and studded with too much cinnamon. 

“Hey,” he says. He keeps his hands to himself, instead relying on his voice to rouse his passenger. “Keith. C’mon, wake up.”

Keith unfolds himself from the depths of his seat and spends thirty minutes studiously eating through a 20-piece order of chicken nuggets. Shiro’s impressed and disgusted in equal measure. Cold chicken nuggets have a chemical tang that remind him of hospital cafeterias. He’s only able to consume them when they’re molton hot. 

Keith eats like someone who hasn’t, in a while, and who doesn’t want to throw up. Shiro doesn’t know how to tell him that eating those nuggets slowly is a surefire road to nausea-town. 

Shiro doesn’t offer Keith a pie. When it became clear that he wasn’t going to wake up fast, Shiro decided to hell with manners and enjoyed all three of them himself. The filling’s no good once it cools, anyway. Maybe it’s a fast-food thing; he’s never given it much thought.

“I thought I’d have to make you slow down,” Shiro says. “But here I am, telling you to speed up. We need to keep moving, and I’m not driving with empty food wrappers in the truck. I’ve got standards.”

“Sorry,” Keith says. He tucks the unopened packets of barbeque sauce into his sweatshirt pocket and crumples the grease-stained paper bag into a ball. “Any other trash I can take?”

“Get rid of the sauce,” Shiro says. “We can get more food. That stuff’s basically corn syrup.” Keith might not know it, but Galra don’t do so well eating processed sugars and vegetable byproducts; they’re obligate carnivores. One of the big Galra who got experimented on about the same time the Garrison replaced Shiro’s arm was uncomfortable proof of this fact. As time went on, his big eyes got bigger and the soft fur covering his body went limp and fell out. It’s how Shiro knows that Galra skin is kind of like a cat’s. Any markings in their fur correspond to darker pigmentation on the skin beneath. 

Judging from the way Keith’s looking gaunt and unshowered around the edges — which, granted, could have something to do with how long he’s been on the run — Shiro guesses he’s been eating whatever he can get that’s cheap and filling. If Keith’s lucky, he’s been getting tuna melts. 

Keith doesn’t look like he’s been lucky. 

Shiro rarely wants to hit anyone. He got his fill when the Garrison was testing out the arm, and most of the fighting he does now is strictly professional, delivered clinically. But he badly wants to hit whatever made Keith run like this, because the Galra are like anyone else: there are assholes, and there are civilians. Shiro’s not convinced that the situation Keith described — the assailant attacking him on the bus, Keith’s instinctual response — is entirely clear-cut. Keith’s claws could kill someone, easy; but Shiro doubts waking a young adult from a sound sleep would result in the kind of coordination required to pull off a severed artery. He wonders if Keith was being hunted; and who he was being hunted by. 

Shiro eases the truck around a pothole smack dab in the middle of the exit lane. They’re just in range of a cell tower; the radio crackles to life.

“— meanwhile, the invading forces have, according to Admiral Sanda, demonstrated weaknesses that can be exploited by the Garrison’s elite mutant force,” the correspondent chirps. “As listeners know, mutants are considered a necessary evil within the military, though not all persons with mutations are considered military assets. This militarized stance is hotly contested by numerous human rights organizations — ”

“Old friends,” Shiro says, talking over the soundbite of some mutant who thinks pacifism is still an option. “I like to know what they’re getting up to.”

“No wonder you decided to change careers.” Keith’s sense of humor has gone a little grim in the intervening years. Shiro barks a laugh, because it’s a relief to hear sarcasm again. He’s been working through black and white logistics for a little too long; Keith is — Shiro forgives himself the pun — a welcome spot of color. 

The broadcast fizzles out again as Shiro navigates the truck around the hairpin curve of a ravine. “It wasn’t just the military,” he says, after a while. “The whole alien thing — ”

“That’s an exaggeration, right?” Keith’s voice is intense, the way it always was when he desperately wanted something to be true. “It’s just another mutation, there aren’t _really — ”_

“There are,” Shiro tells him. “They look a lot like you do, these days.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Shiro can see Keith slouching back into his seat, staring at his claws. Some Galra can change their appearance, more or less depending on how stressed they are. Shiro hopes that’s the case here, that giving Keith a meal and a warm place to sleep has let him relax enough that he’ll start to appear more human. This will be easier if that’s all it takes. Shiro can keep them moving through months of seasonal work with just those tools in his arsenal. 

“They’re called the Galra,” Shiro continues. “Not evil, not good. They’re people. I’ve fought against them and alongside them and — ” He cuts himself off, then starts over. “Bet your claws are sharper than your old knife.”

“Sometimes,” Keith mutters. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just want to be left alone.”

“You mentioned that.” Shiro changes lanes and lets an aggressive station wagon pass him. “Itinerant work?”

Keith sighs. “Anywhere that wasn’t home.” 

“Well, talk me through it,” Shiro prompts. “I’ve been looking to try another field of work. Maybe we could find someplace that’ll pay under the table. I can dye my hair, get a sleeve for the arm. You can...I don’t know. Wear gloves and take some melatonin, maybe you’ll relax a little.”

“You took me skydiving when we were in the mentorship program,” Keith points out wryly. “Now I just want peace and quiet.”

“Age has its rewards,” Shiro says.

They find a campground for the night. Shiro borrows Keith’s knit cap to hide his white hair and keeps his right hand tucked into his pocket when he pays the night’s fee and collects a bundle of firewood from the concessions hut; it’s on the honor system, which means one less person who might remember him. It also means that he doesn’t have to worry when they realize that they don’t have a lighter or matches.

“I don’t smoke,” Keith protests. 

“They’re _useful,_ ” he replies, setting his prosthetic against the bare wood and concentrating until the metal heats and throws sparks. The fire’s roaring in no time. 

Keith’s Galra traits keep fading, the longer he spends in Shiro’s company. Shiro digs out his bedroll from the back of the truck and coaxes Keith down onto it, resting against Shiro’s side so they can both enjoy the fire. Warmth, sleep, food; maybe touch is the final part of the equation. Shiro’s honest enough with himself to know that he’s not being altruistic about the whole thing. It’s nice to be alive again. 

“Did you mean it?” Keith asks. He’s looking straight ahead, but Shiro’s not driving now: he can examine Keith’s face in the firelight, can try and read the tension in Keith’s jaw and the way his claws haven’t quite reverted back to fingertips. That’ll be a problem, if Keith can't figure out how to make the switch, if only because the Galra Shiro knew never could get a pop-tab open. Shiro thinks that there will be a lot of canned soup in their future, if things play out the way he’s hoping they might. 

“I’ve never lied to you, Keith,” Shiro says. They’ve been apart for years, and maybe the Garrison announced that Shiro was dead, but Shiro has never once told Keith something that isn’t true. 

When they first met, Keith had looked at him and said, “this isn’t a game, you know.” Keith was one of those kids who needed honesty. Shiro had appreciated that: he got enough of the starry-eyed nonsense in his pre-training corps, and he’d agreed to do the mentorship program mostly because his aunt had done it when she was in the service and had impressed upon him, firmly, that it was the right thing to do. Shiro hadn’t expected to get along with Keith, and he hadn’t tried to. The lack of bullshit turned into a solid foundation. Shiro even missed him, while he was away. Shiro didn’t have a lot of time for missing anything when he was in the Garrison, survival being an all-encompassing task.

“Well, good,” Keith says. He darts a look at Shiro; in the firelight, it’s hard to tell if his sclera are still yellow, but his pupils have lost the cat-like look. “Don’t start lying to me now.”

“Do you one better,” Shiro offers. He holds out his right hand, concentrates until it floods purple; he’s holding back the heat of the energy, but only just. “We’re in the same club, you and me. How about: I watch your back. You watch mine.”

“How is that a deal for you?” Keith asks. “I know you can take care of anything that comes after me. But I’m no match for whatever ex-military cult situation you’re escaping from.”

“Well,” Shiro says. “The company couldn’t be better.”

Keith scoffs for a moment, but Shiro’s not joking. The time on the road has been restful, even in the act of fleeing. Shiro is aware of his own psychological trauma, and he’s just as aware that giving himself a job is a coping mechanism that can hurt or heal him in the long run. Looking after Keith — Shiro’s done worse and hasn’t been nearly as content. 

Keith touches Shiro’s palm. The energy _could_ hurt him, but Shiro doesn’t want it to. That intention, combined with Keith’s Galra characteristics, makes the light flare a bit, until Keith clamps his fingers down hard; Shiro can see the purple that’s still tinting Keith’s skin recede at the exposure, until his hands, at last, look human again. 

“What — ” Keith lets up his grip. 

“I didn’t know I could do that,” Shiro says. The last time he touched a Galra with his hand activated was — under different circumstances. 

Keith wiggles his fingers. His eyes are still a little yellow and there’s a purple streak sitting like a scar across one cheek, but he’s looking less like a Galra by the minute. “I feel different,” he says. 

“You look calmer,” Shiro offers. Most of the time he can’t feel the energy surge in his prosthetic as more than a low buzz, but right now he’s warm in a way he’s not willing to attribute to their campfire. “This could be a good thing, Keith.”

“Is it you or your hand?” Keith asks. He’s gone back to staring at the fire, turning this new information over in his head. 

“I think this proves my point,” Shiro says, shuffling closer. “We can stick together and find out. I’m not looking for trouble any more than you are.”

Keith’s smile, when it manifests, is sweeter than Shiro remembers. “Still doesn’t seem like a win for you,” he says. “But I’ll take the deal.”

“I like the sound of that,” Shiro says, and reaches out to pull Keith all the way against his side. It’s for warmth, but it feels good to reach out to another person and have them lean into the touch. It feels even better knowing that the person in question is Keith, who was skittish on a good day when Shiro first met him and who has spent much of their reunion demonstrating the kind of hypersensitivity Shiro associates with enslaved footsoldiers. Keith relaxes into to touch after a heartbeat, and Shiro feels his own cortisol levels start to drop. He's missed tactility; punching a guy's lights out doesn't compare to having someone to lean against.

It’s only later, after Keith has snuggled down in Shiro’s sleeping bag, still tucked against Shiro’s side, that things turn sour. 

“Hello, Shirogane,” Sanda says from the other side of the campfire. Shiro’s been waiting for the embers to die down before turning in himself. She’s the highest-ranking person from the Garrison that Shiro knows of, and he remembers the way she used to come into the lab and survey him while he got his infusions. There was always something calculating about how she talked to the scientists, as if Shiro was a commodity.

Shiro doesn’t even have to concentrate for his hand to start gathering energy; Sanda has that effect on people. He moves from his cross-legged slouch until he’s poised on one knee, ready to lunge forward. 

“No need for alarm,” she continues. She hasn’t moved from her position, standing at attention. There’s a sprinter van parked across the drive to their campsite, but the campfire is throwing off enough light that Shiro can’t tell how many Garrison people are inside. “I’ve enjoyed watching your little competitions, since you took your sabbatical. Very charming, salt-of-the-earth stuff. You’ve had your vacation and it’s time you return to base.”

“You don’t own me,” Shiro snarls. “I’m not coming back.”

“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s a war going on,” Sanda snaps back. “And like it or loathe it, you signed your life away when you joined the program. I _do_ own you.”

Beside him, Keith stirs. Shiro spares a glance down and sees that Keith’s wide awake tense, unswaddled from the sleeping bag. Good to know he has some survival instincts, even if this wasn’t how Shiro had hoped to test them. 

“I thought that contract was terminated upon my death,” Shiro stalls. “The amount of times my heart stopped when I was at the Garrison, I think I’m in the clear.”

Sanda snorts. It’s an unladylike sound, a reminder that she doesn’t care about appearances when she’s getting a job done. “A technicality.”

Keith pounces and clears the embers, knocking Sanda off her feet and pinning her haphazardly. His claws are back, and so’s the purple fur-skin; Shiro bets his eyes are all the way yellow again.

As soon as Keith leapt, Shiro started moving. Sanda didn’t reach her position by being a slouch in hand-to-hand combat, and she’s already got her hands in a tight grip around Keith’s neck. It’s a stalemate. He has his claws at her belly and neck, but his grip’s not going to hold her much longer. 

Shiro adds his own weight to the pile, kicking Sanda’s knee _hard_ before he pins her, hoping to dislocate the joint.

“You found a pet Galra,” Sanda snarls. “Perfect, you can bring him with. We can always use another runt in the lab.”

“No,” Shiro tells her before knocking her unconscious. He delivers another punch to her solar plexus before he stands, hauling Keith up with him. No one has emerged from the sprinter van, but he doubts she was working alone. If he squints, he can see a vague shape at the wheel — some lackey, maybe. If he had to put money on it, he’d say it was Mitch; Iverson always followed Sanda to a point, but once he hit that point, he’d turn to stone.

“Get in the car,” Shiro says, breathing hard even though he’s barely done anything. He’s not going back to the Garrison, not if he has to fight to the death — 

Shiro doesn’t have the luxury of fighting to the death anymore. He’s got Keith to look after. 

He kicks dirt over the fire and ties Sanda up with her own belt and boot laces before lurching to the truck; Keith’s already in the driver’s seat, keys in the ignition, waiting for him. 

“Change of plans,” Keith says, “Judging from your old commanding officer, I don’t think we’re going to Montana anymore.”

“I won’t go back to the Garrison,” Shiro says. He feels drained, haunted. The infusions were bad enough, but the surgery for his arm was worse, even with his healing factor. 

“No, you won’t,” Keith says. He looks different, with a purpose, even though he’s still purple and shaking like a leaf. “Not if I have to join the rebellion and overthrow the Garrison myself.”

And — well, it’s a thought. 


End file.
